The Revised Listening Style Profile

The original Listening Styles Profile (LSP-16; Watson et al., 1995) was developed to capture individual variability in the tendency to listen in habitual ways.  The four orientations measured by the original 16-item scale (people, content, action, and time) reflected preferences of listening with respect to how, where, when, with whom, and what types of information people reported enjoying most.  In this view, listening styles are habitual reactions that individual listeners oriented toward, especially in novel situations (Imhof, 2004).

Following the discovery of psychometric issues with the LSP-16 (Bodie & Worthington, 2010), Bodie, et al. (2013) developed a revised, 24-item measure (LSP-R) that captures four “goals that listeners have when engaged in situations that call them to be a particular kind of listener” (p. 86).  Relational listening (RL) is a concern with and awareness of others’ feelings and emotions.  Analytical listening (AL) reflects an intentional focus on the full message of a speaker prior to forming a judgment.  Task-oriented listening (TOL) refers to a concern with the amount of time spent listening as well as a desire to interact with focused speakers.  Critical listening (CL) is a tendency to evaluate and critically assess messages for accuracy and consistency. All items are assessed along 7-point Likert scaling.

Evidence that the LSP-R factors appropriately is summarized here. 

More recently a shortened version of the LSP-R – the LSP-R8, has been introduced (Rinke & Moy, 2015).

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